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Russian born and trained as an architect, Alexey Klimov seeks for metaphors of other kind and embraces chaos as the operative force in nature. The sculptor brings to his neo-constructivist works an urban sensibility rooted in the tradition of Malevich and Tatlin but thoroughly steeped in the American preoccupation with invention and reinvention, of recycling and preserving old artifacts in new contexts.His vision--asserting the dynamics of sculptural space--embodies the underlying process of metamorphosis itself. His sculptures are expositions of time’s degradation of the built landscape, where the material fabrications of man and the forces of nature intersect--the point of deterioration. They are metaphors of time, microcosmic arenas in which the drama of arrrested time is played out for ourcontemplation.

It is hard today to look at approximations of exposed steel beams, at sheet metal twisted or contorted, and not to be reminded of the haunting carcass of the World Trade Center. And yet Klimov’s sculptures have no tragedy or pity attached to them, rather they sing out in praise of the built world as it coexists side by sidewith nature: it ages, as it takes on patina--even as it crumbles, as some Greek ruins do, their marble columns scoured of the gilding which to modern eyes might render them hideous. If nature verges on chaos, Klimov has embraced a controlling corollary of such inevitable change--perhaps a parallel universe, what he’s called the magic of the Spirit of the City, where metamorphosis rules but man’s work abides: function of its lack transformed into beauty. Klimov’s art hints at some troubling spiritual power that lies readily at hand--the artist’s way of celebrating life over darkness.

David ClevelandNovelist and art writer for ArtNews and Art in America

How artificial are paved streets, cement sidewalks and steel and glass buildings of our cities? Ask the Moscow-born sculptor Alexey Klimov and he’ll give you a two-part answer. On one hand, he’ll say, there is nothing more unnatural under the sun than our man-made urban environment. On the other, he’ll tell you, mankind’s ubiquitous constructions are capable of supplanting nature, becoming in time a species of Nature themselves.Alexey Klimov has characterized the essential nature of urban reality as “dilapidating cityscape.” Its “perpetual decay,” he persuasively argues, “transforms man-made objects into spiritual entities.” Like a farmer seasonally turning his plot of land, Klimov has harnessed elements from the city’s death to turn them into life. Like the city’s poet, Klimov has raised the stakes of the significance of these elements with every new work, alchemically turning the forms of postindustrial disaster into icons of contemporary survival.

Christian Viveros-FauneArt writer for ArtNews and Art in America

All we have said has particular reference to the oeuvre of one of the most interesting artists of the present, Alexey Klimov, heir to Schwitters, Altman, Malevich, and Archipenko; Klimov can be considered one of the vital exponents of ÒNeo-ConstructivismÓ. Klimov offers us a violent and impressive work, which it seems enters and violates (quickly) our mind and anonymous objects, all of which we still recognize as fruits of an experience, of a feeling, of a ÒpastÓ. Color red not by chance, numbers not by chance, nor stars by chance, nor semi-flags, nor metals, nor wires... This Russian artist offers us a body of work that goes beyond daily preoccupations; he offers us an art that tries to become a casual agent striving to change, direct, or explain life and its dark sides, those which must be changed and those which cry out to be explained or judged. We stand before an artist whose identity is expressed in his talent for giving form and substance to an internal motivation (personal, external, general) or to a desire replete with passion and force.

Raul E. RomeroArt writer

Alexey Klimov’s bursting and aggressive shapes have their roots in Constructivism, but in some sculptures he contains the energy within a kind of Minimalist grid or sabotages the fundamentally “pure” geometries of that movement by introducing analogues to the natural world—eyes, birds in flight, and even the human body in Queen of Scots and Queen of Spades. And he has more than a little fun spoofing the pedestal concept with bases that resemble ordinary table supports.

Ann LandiContributing Editor of ARTnews and the author of the Schrimer Encyclopedia of Art